“I told them they should trust you. That you had a right to know.”
Truth. I relaxed my grip on her and she straightened in my arms but didn’t try to break free.
“You wouldn’t have done what you did,” Mac said to Ryodan pointedly, “if you hadn’t been willing to live with the essential makeup of the one you did it to for a very long time. That, more than anything, is a testament to what you think of the Keltar clan. Trust Christian. Make him an ally, not an enemy. We have more than enough enemies out there already.”
Ryodan looked at Mac for a long moment then smiled faintly. “Ah, Mac, sometimes you do surprise me.”
“I take that as one hell of a compliment,” she said dryly. “My point is, yes, you can keep trying to kick Christian’s ass. Yes, you could hunt him and, if one day you catch him, kill him. You could all stalk around for a small eternity being the testosterone-laden brutes you all sometimes are.”
Barrons and Ryodan shot her a nearly identical look of disgruntlement, and I laughed softly.
She ignored them. “But consider the power he has. Do you really want that turned against us? You, Ryodan, more than most, have the ability to clear a logical path through dense emotions. Think about the potential if you become allies. Think about the grand waste if you become enemies. Three incredibly powerful men stand in this corridor. If you want to brawl, make an alliance, then beat the shit out of each other. With limits. No killing. Ever.”
Ryodan growled, “You fucking Highlanders. I knew the moment I laid eyes on you that you’d be trouble.”
“Friend or foe?” I said.
Ryodan stared at me, unmoving for a long moment. Finally, “There are times I could use a sifter,” he allowed.
“You think I would let you that close to me?” I snorted.
“For you to take someone like Dancer or Jada to inspect various places.”
I inclined my head. That was easy enough. “There are times I may need assistance as well.”
“Such as the cliff we just dragged your ass off of,” Ryodan said flatly.
“See how well you’ve been working together already?” Mac said brightly.
“You will never speak of what you learn tonight,” Barrons said.
“I won’t agree to that,” I said.
“Then destroy my club,” Ryodan said coldly. “And I, and all my men, will hunt you until the end of time. Enemy or ally, Highlander. We’d make stupendous ones, either way.”
“Pledge your alliance to me. Tell me you will never try to kill me. Say it,” I demanded. So I could take fair measure of it. These were men of honor, in the same way I was. Corrupted as we are, there must be a solid core or we become the villains. If Ryodan spoke and it rang true, he would adhere to the letter of the law he’d chosen. As would I.
“I can’t guarantee I can make that claim sound like truth,” Ryodan warned. “There’s a part of me that obeys no one and nothing. And if you focus on that part, no words of mine will ever sound like truth to you.”
“Then we’ll be enemies. I suggest you convince me.”
Ryodan glanced at Barrons and they exchanged a long look. Then Ryodan glanced away as if consummately chafed. “We are allies,” he said.
“And we will protect each other and fight together against common foes. Say it.”
He repeated it coolly.
I waited.
He looked at me, I at him. I wasn’t asking. He knew what I wanted.
“And we will never turn on each other.” His words dripped ice. It didn’t matter. He’d said them.
I looked at Barrons, who then repeated the same. Both of their voices held the knell of a sacred pledge. Smacked of truth.
Sauntering close to the walls I’d thrown up, locking gazes with me, Ryodan said with silky menace, “And we will guard each other’s secrets as our own.”
Fucker, I thought. But I knew he’d not seal the alliance without it. And I knew we’d be at an impasse forever if I didn’t. Truth was, I preferred them as allies, not enemies. The Unseelie sure as hell didn’t have my back.
Barrons echoed it.
“Now you, Mac,” I said.
She looked at me, startled, but repeated the entire oath.
I said it with her. All the way through. Right down to guarding each other’s secrets as our own. Then I withdrew a blade and cut my wrist.
Barrons and Ryodan exchanged another of those inscrutable glances.
“Blood,” I demanded. “Yours with mine. It’s a pact ancient and binding, made to an Unseelie prince.”
“He’s one demanding fuck,” Ryodan murmured to Barrons.
Barrons said to me, “Magic doesn’t bind us.”
“I’ve heard some does,” I said. I’d caught wind of Lor getting chained up by the Unseelie princess in Ryodan’s office.
Barrons gave me a dark-edged smile that disturbed me more than a little. “Have you any bloody idea what you’re doing, Highlander?”
“I’ve no doubt sharing blood with the two of you will screw with me in ways unimaginable and uncounted. Nevertheless, we’re doing it.” I dropped my walls and released Mac. Moved forward slowly.
The four of us came together in the middle of the corridor, meeting warily.
Only when each of us had smears of all of our blood mixed together on our arms, above an open vein, Mac, too—and she was a bit of a challenge, as quickly as she kept healing—did I relax.
I could see the magic of our sworn oath shimmering on the air around us. Performed properly, by a high druid, oaths have enormous power. It wasn’t just the Unseelie blood in me they should worry about.
Barrons was at Mac’s side, shooting me a killing look that said clearly, Never threaten my woman again.
Those two. Christ.
“Come.” Ryodan turned and walked away.
—
I followed him to the north corridor, my wings canted up behind me, so not to have my feathers serve as a bloody broom and attract every bit of dust and slosh of ice on the floor.
At the wall that wasn’t a wall but had been as impenetrable as those of the Unseelie prison, Ryodan stopped and pressed his hands to the air, as if there were indeed a surface there. He murmured softly, touching various places, then traced runes in the air.
A corridor was revealed before us.
From the far end, terrible sounds echoed.